One genre of visual arts that always appeals to me is Poster Art. In the United Kingdom I particularly like Railway Poster Art whilst in America all types of poster art appeals to me in particular the way they advertise their seaside destinations. This blog post will look at American Poster Art whilst a later post will look at UK Railway Poster Art. Let us look at some of the history of American Poster Art.
Please note the Copyright of the narrative “American
Poster Art History” below belongs to :-
American
Poster Art History
The 20th Century would be dominated by
American commercial illustration, not least because of its powerful publishing
and printing industry. The introduction of four-colour letterpress printing
technology made possible the faithful reproduction of a full colour painting.
Henceforth illustrators could have their drawings and paintings reproduced exactly
as created. Soon, publications like Harper's Weekly, McClure's, Scribner's,
and The Century began to attract America's best painters as freelance
illustrators. New publications appeared, including the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's
Weekly, American Magazine, McCall's, Peterson's, Woman's
Home Companion, Metropolitan, Outing, The Delineator, All-Story
Magazine, Vogue and others, leading to a huge increase in
opportunities for illustrative artists, although this did not prevent the use
of labour-saving devices like cameras, Balopticans and pantographs. Young
talented illustrators at this time included Stanley Arthurs, Harvey Dunn, Edward Hopper, Frank Schoonover and N.C. Wyeth, along with
outstanding women-artists like Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, Jessie
Willcox Smith, Sarah S. Stillwell and Ellen Thompson.
World War I led to increased demand for posters and
billboards, as well as pictures of the fighting. Eight leading illustrators,
including W. J. Aylward, Walter Jack Duncan, Harvey Dunn, Wallace Morgan,
Ernest Peixotto, and Harry Townsend, were sent to the Western Front to produce
paintings and drawings (now in the Smithsonian Institute) to inform the public
and also stimulate more support for the war effort. See also James Montgomery
Flagg's famous 1917 army recruiting poster depicting Uncle Sam pointing
directly at the viewer. (Famous American World War II propaganda posters include Rosie
the Riveterby Norman Rockwell.)
The 1920s post war boom in America led to even greater
demand for commercial images, advertising graphics, and literary pictures to
accompany magazine serializations of novels by the likes of F.Scott Fitzgerald,
and Ernest Hemingway. Literary illustrators such as Walter Biggs, Charles
Chambers, Dean Cornwell, James Montgomery Flagg, became celebrities in the
process. Meanwhile Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), whose niche
was the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, was fast becoming a
household name in American art, with his nostalgic, sentimental pictures of a
bygone era. In the 1920s new periodicals emerged, including The New Yorker, Vanity
Fair, Smart Set and College Humor, all of which recruited new
artists to illustrate their contents.
In contrast, the 1930s was a bleak era of depression and
recession. Many illustrators were laid off and publications closed (two
exceptions being Fortune magazine, launched in 1930, and Esquire magazine,
launched 1933), while photography began
to replace hand-drawn imagery. The only bright spot was the increased demand
for paintings and drawings to illustrate pulp novels, a genre which attracted
newcomer illustrators like Walter Baumhofer, Emery Clarke, John Clymer, John
Falter, Robert G. Harris, Tom Lovell, and Amos Sewell, as well as established
illustrators like Robert Graef, John Newton Howitt, George Rozen, and Herbert
Morton Stoops.
The 1940s offered new illustrative possibilities. During
the war, these included advertising imagery for military products, and magazine
illustrations aimed at home front wives and girlfriends of servicemen on active
duty overseas. After the war, there was a surge in demand for advertising
graphics, point of sale imagery, and magazine illustrations. The post war baby
boom also led to increased demand for illustrated books for children. Leading
American illustrators of the time included John Gannam, John Falter, Robert
Fawcett and Haddon Sundblom.
The 1950s proved to be a pivotal decade for American
illustrators. It began well, with strong demand across the board, notably in
advertising and marketing. Unfortunately, the advent of television led to a
major decline in magazine advertising, and a consequent reduction in
illustrated pages. More photography was employed to introduce greater realism
in publishing, and this too led to a drop in demand for illustrative works.
Brighter colours and bolder themes failed to arrest the decline, as many
magazines went bankrupt. As it was, the 1960s witnessed a mini-resurgence of
the medium, with a new demand for music album covers, music posters, and comic
book art. (The music poster movement expanded into marketing and merchandizing
with free album-posters, as well as promotional concert posters. Demand for
this type of fine art echoed the earlier demand for vintage posters during the
late 19th century.) In addition, the growing popularity of paperback novels
(Penguin Books, Pocket Books, Bantam Books) created a fierce market for
attractive front-cover art. Practitioners of this precise form of poster-like
literary illustration included James Avati, James Bama, and Stanley Meltzoff.
The late 1950s also saw the emergence of famous artists like Andy Warhol (1928-87), and Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97), who cut their
teeth on commercial graphic design - including cartoon imagery and screen-printing techniques - before
becoming major figures in the 1960s Pop art market. Warhol for instance studied
painting and design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh
(1945-49), before producing illustrations for shoe advertisements, album cover
designs, and also literay illustrations for Truman Capote's writings. For more,
see Andy Warhol's Pop Art of the sixties and
seventies.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the US commercial art market
fragmented into a large number of more specialized segments, including:
animation and movies, video games, music, book illustration, fashion drawing,
"Sword and Sorcery" paperback books, newspaper comic strips,
political cartoons and others. It was the last decade in which illustration
remained largely unaffected by the Computer Revolution.
By contrast, illustration in the 1990s was changed for
ever by the universal adoption of computer systems and computerised methods of
image-creation, editing, replication and communication. The art of illustration
became the technique of image processing, as more and more commercial artists
produced professional pictures without any traditional art training, or without
any ability in drawing. More and more professional illustrators were replaced
by novices proficient in graphics software programs like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop,
and CorelDRAW, as well as Wacom tablets and Kai's Power Tools.
At the same time, however, this type of digital art has been combined with more
traditional methods. Fusion illustration, for instance, is a mixed form of fine
art and commercial art involving illustration, graphic design, typography, and
photography. Moreover, the widespread popularity of the science-fiction and
fantasy genres (books, games, posters, products) has created an entirely new
genre requiring both fine art and digital skills.
|
Types & Styles of Illustration Here is a short list of selected styles of illustrative
art, featuring some of the main types of magazine, book and post
illustrations of the 20th century. Listed thematically, rather than
chronologically, it is not intended to be exhaustive, and for reasons of
space, certain categories (eg. comics and music imagery) have been left out
altogether. Children's Illustrations |
Note: To
use the above table contents effectively “copy and paste” the Artist Name and
the Painting Description directly into Google search and it will bring up the
details available on the internet. This will normally include the images and
supporting narrative.
End of narrative by © visual-arts-cork.com. All rights
reserved.
David
Bannister Postscript
As you can appreciate from the above narrative on
American Posters this is a huge subject with the many sub-genre within the
poster movement. What you like will be your personal preference. With Google
you will be able to further research your own preferences remembering to use
Google Images to locate posters.
Below I have listed some of the resources I like to use
to look at and purchase poster prints.
Fine Art America is the world’s largest art marketplace
and print-on-demand technology company founded in 2006. You will not find all
artists on their site since artists may not have licensed the reproduction of
their work to them. For example you will not find anything by Edward Hopper.
But impressively over one hundred and fifty Norman Rockwell painting are displayed
and copies can be purchased.
I have to admit this is a personal choice of mine with
these not vintage posters but recently painted ones that capture the atmosphere
of American beach towns. It brings back for me my holidays in America.
http://www.beachtownposters.com
This is a really unusual site that sells original metal
signs. It is a site offering everything and it is super to browse through the
range on offer. Smaller signs can be purchased that are very low priced.
